Death in the Polka Dot Shoes

by Marlin Fitzwater

It was always dark at the bar, but I had never entered when it was empty, leaving the place with a lonely feel, as if I shouldn’t be there. Then Simy’s voice, tired and a little edgy, called me in.

  “Come in, Ned,” she said. “I saw you tie up and thought you might stop by.”

  “Thanks, Simy. We had a good trip to the island. Made a few dollars for the cause. I think people enjoyed it.”

  “That’s good,” she said, “Lil and Pete do a lot of good work around here. For new folks, they understand what it’s all about. Can I get you a beer before closing?”

  “Thanks,” I said, edging onto a stool. “Are you about to shut down?”

  “Close,” she said. Simy continued to drag the dish rag around the counter, not functionally, but in a slow even motion suggesting a long and understanding relationship between her and the wood. She had a history at the bar. Fights and brawls, words screamed in anger, deals made for motors and secondhand boats, spilled beer and broken bottles, even a couple of bullet marks from trajectories through the high windows on the street side of the building. Simy had often stared at those windows when she came to work, wondering how the shooter could have gotten high enough to put a bullet through the window and down as low as the bar. Her conclusion was a truck cab, an eighteen wheeler, passenger side. At least those giant trucks were rare enough that she didn’t worry much about it happening again.

  “Ned,” she said, “we haven’t had a chance to talk. How do you like being back?”

  “Great,” I said. “It takes some getting used to. But I like the people. The pace is so slow here it’s like being retired.”

  “Not if you’ve always lived here,” she said. “Not if your life depends on showing up every day for work.”

  “Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to imply anything. I’m just adjusting, that’s all.”

  “Have they found your brother’s killer yet?”

  “Not yet,” I said, realizing the word must be spreading.

  “Sorry about Jimmy,” she said. “He could be so sweet. I remember when he first started using his boat for charter fishing, and the crabbing of course. My daddy said that was another sign of the end. He said when the boys go from catching fish to kissing ass, we’re in trouble.”

  “Well,” I ventured, “I’m still fishing.”

  “Look at Pete and the Lil,” she said. “They have a new sonar that tells them where the fish are located. GPS tells them where to go. All he has to do is bait the hooks, and take care of the guests: that’s the tough part, ice, beer, tee shirts, hats, seasick medicine and deli sandwiches. God only knows what it takes to pamper those people.”

  “That’s the future,” I agreed.

  “I don’t care,” she said. “I just hate to see change.”

  “Why?” I asked. “You’re a beautiful young woman. Change is good for you.”

  Simy was wearing a black tee shirt, tucked into her jeans, that even late at night exposed her ample breasts and full figure. In fact, now that I thought about it, she must have tucked her shirt since I came in. Sprucing up a little, as my granddad used to say.

  “Neddie,” she began, “I used to live with my folks over on Jenkins Creek. My daddy would come home with a big batch of crabs and my mom would steam them into the best Sunday afternoon crab feast in this county. And Daddy would bring home oysters, and we had em raw, on the half shell, fried, baked and every other way you can cook em. My brothers and sisters had a wonderful life. Our own little boats tied up at the dock. We’d go out in the evening and drink beer and float in when the sun came down. I even lost my virginity in that boat. My boyfriend laid down in the bottom and I sat on him. And every time a wave came by I would float up and down on that boy. It was the best sex he ever had. And I didn’t even know what I was doing. But that’s life on the water. Livin and lovin just kind of run together. We didn’t plan anything. We just ate, and fished, and swam and made love as it came along.”

  “What happened to the boy?”

  “What boy?”

  “The one in the boat.”

  “Oh, that was Kevin. He became a waterman. Worked for my daddy for a while, and then got killed in a car wreck. He was a nice boy.”

  “My daddy owned so many businesses around here, nearly every boy in the county worked for him at one time or another. He owned a liquor store and even the grocery store for a while. But they never seemed to work out, and Daddy would drift back to the water. Those crabs were always there, free for the pickin.”

  “When did your dad retire?” I asked.

  “Several years ago,” Simy said. “I don’t remember when. How can you tell? One day he started collecting social security, so I assumed he was 65, but he’s gone now.”

  Simy seemed within herself, talking about her father as if reflecting on a distant past. She took another drink of beer, and set the bottle down gently. She seemed to soften in the dark, and I started to wonder if she might enjoy an evening at the Willard.

  “My daddy was always looking for opportunity,” she said. “I remember once he decided to get in the “buy boat” business. It used to be that restaurant and other buyers would take your crab baskets right off your boat, pay cash, and bring them back the next day. Then the refrigerated trucks started showing up. They would meet you at the dock, and pay you better money because they could carry more fish, or oysters, or whatever and deliver them longer distance.

  “My daddy looked at that and said to himself, ‘Why can’t I do both?’ So he bought a used refrigerator truck, just a pickup with a cold box on the back, and bingo, he was in business. This was back in the fifties, when nobody had to worry much about licenses and permits and all that stuff. Anyway, he loads up a ton of oysters and heads for a big restaurant on Long Island. As he finishes unloading his oysters, three guys come up behind him and grab his arms. They throw him against the truck and give him a warning.

  “This is our territory and don’t ever come back.” Then they threw him to the ground and walked off. But Daddy was a pretty tough old bird, and he still had a half truck of oysters left. So he pulls himself together, and drives into New York City to deliver the rest of his load to the Fulton Fish Market. That’s a big market down on the tip of Manhattan that’s been there for years. So he finishes unloading his truck to all these Italian boys and bang, the same three guys grab him from behind. They say, “Didn’t we tell you not to do business here?” Then they hit Daddy, and knocked him down, and kicked him. He came home in terrible shape, even with a broken arm. Mama got him all fixed up with liniment and all of her home treatments, then took him to Annapolis to have his arm fixed. The next day Daddy didn’t get up till noon. But he put an ad in the paper for that truck, and that was the end of the fish wholesale business. Two days later he was back on the Bay, crabbin.”

  “Did you go to college, Simy?” I asked. That was a Washington question. Sometimes the old ways crept back and reminded me again that the cultures had changed. At the Willard, I always asked girls about college, jobs and what neighborhood they lived in, hoping to strike a line of conversation. In Parkers, we ask about family or boats. I shouldn’t have asked Simy about college, because most waitresses haven’t gone to college, and some are embarrassed about it, not because they didn’t have the brains or the talent. The problem was money, and the fact that few families made college an important objective. Getting a job or married were the important goals.

  “I have been working right here all my life,” Simy said. “Sure, I left for a while. I had big jobs in Baltimore, and down in Miami. But I came home. They didn’t work out.”

  “Did you like Florida?” I asked.

  “I loved it,” she said. “I drank a lot of beer and spent a lot of nights on the beach. But after a few years I realized I hadn’t met one boy with long-term intentions, and no job ever lasted more than a few months. High turnover everywhere. No future down there.”

  “When did you come back?”

  “A few years ago,” she said. “I got a great job
with an insurance company in Washington. But it wasn’t much different than Florida really.”

  “Everything temporary,” I suggested.

  “No. Everything about sex. I worked for three bosses and they all propositioned me. I said no and I never got promoted. One day I called my mom and said I want to come home. She made one call to Mabel here at the Bayfront and here I am.”

  I was getting tired and decided to let the conversation drop. It was quiet as I reached for my last drink. Simy said nothing, but she lifted the bar top that allowed her to escape the barmaid’s pen, walked behind me and sat on the stool to my left. I hadn’t noticed that she had left a bottle of beer on the bar, almost directly in front of her present location. She slid the bottle closer, drank, and then wiped the condensation from the bottle. She wiped her face with the bar rag, possibly leaving more stain on her face than she removed. But she had been sweating, and small beads remained on her forehead. I was a little surprised by the feeling of familiarity, of sensuality in the darkness of the bar, but it was there. I tried to look at her closely, sitting just inches from her face, to judge her age and the hard times that must have lodged in her pores. But she was pretty. Her skin was smooth, and I wondered why she looked more attractive up close than from a distance. Most times it’s the other way around.

  “Promise me you’ll be careful,” Simy said. She looked directly in my direction, although it took a few seconds to make the eye to eye connection. She moved her hand to my leg and slowly stroked my thigh. I couldn’t tell if it was sexual or just out of friendship, and I didn’t really know which I wanted it to be.

  “I promise,” I said.

  She stared at me with warmth. “Neddie, you’re so sweet. And here’s my promise to you,” she said. She moved her hand to cover the zipper of my jeans, and rapidly flicked one finger to record the unmistakable offer.

  “Goodnight Ned,” she said, moving quickly off the stool and back behind the bar.

  Chapter Eleven

  I was working on a little property dispute involving a small waterfront community of cottage dwellers who claimed ownership of a thirty-yard tract on the water. The Community Association also claimed ownership, so now I’m trying to sort out the history of competing claims. Community children would put their crab pots in the water at the end of the tract, and in the past, when most of the homeowners liked each other, there were picnics on the property overlooking the Bay. But since the issue of ownership was raised, the ensuing squabbling and animosity between the Community Association and homeowners bordering the property pretty much ended the picnics.

  Unfortunately, my clients were the two families who lived on either side of the easement. They got together one Sunday afternoon and decided that they owned the property, and that it wasn’t community property at all. At least not the legal kind. They examined their deeds and discovered that the two of them owned the property, no easement was recorded, and that in fact the community was using the property due to the largess of their deceased relatives, who had invited in the neighbors some fifty years ago. Their first step in reclaiming the land was to notify the community. Their second step was to ask Pippy Plotkin for a real estate appraisal of the value of the property, which they excitedly learned was several hundred thousand dollars. And their third step was to hire me. Not that reversing that process would have changed things. But I would have preferred to have been first.

  I was going over their deeds when the Calico Cat, Effie Humboldt, pushed open my office door.

  “Effie,” I said with some surprise. “Come in. I was just thinking of you.”

  “Ned,” she said, “you come and go so fast, I never get to see you. But I hear about you all over town. The watermen think of you as an apprentice. I think they waiver between fearing you’ll be lost in a storm, or leave town over anguish about your brother. They don’t get many newcomers in this business and they hope you’ll make it.”

  “Thanks Effie,” I said. “They’ve been very helpful.”

  “How’s the law business?” she asked.

  “Not bad,” I said. “Parkers may be the luckiest town in America. They haven’t needed many lawyers. A few spats between neighbors, but not many lawsuits and very few contracts. People here don’t seem to worry much about getting things in writing. They build houses without contracts. They even die without wills. Actually, it could be a gold mine for me.”

  “Have you had any bad experiences?” she asked.

  “No,” I said. “I didn’t mean that. Just different experiences. I had a guy come in yesterday who had built a new bulkhead on his waterfront property. He hired old Sam Sharpe from over at West River, who’s been building piers here for fifty years. Most people say he’s the best. Anyway, it seems Sam pulled on to my client’s property in his beat up 1973 pickup truck, looked over the job, then walked from one side of the waterfront to the other, turned around and said, ‘It’s a hundred feet and I’ll do it for fifteen thousand dollars.’”

  “My client said that sounded fine, and asked Sam if they needed a piece of paper of some kind, a contract. Sam said he never used a contract, so my client observed that fifteen thousand was quite a bit of money and he would like a piece of paper. Old Sam seemed a little baffled, but he smiled and said sure. Then he walked over to his truck, which had papers of every kind stacked on the passenger seat, on the dash and the floorboard. He fished out a small pad of paper and pencil, walked back to my client and wrote the number, fifteen, on the pad, tore off the page and handed it to my client. My client was laughing so hard he didn’t even mind when Sam asked for five thousand as a down payment.”

  “But six months later old Sam came in with his rusty crane and a bull dozer, dug out the old bulkhead, set about twenty pilings in place, and finished the job in every way except replacing several tons of dirt between the new bulkhead and the yard. Then big as you please, he walked over to my client and asked for another five thousand dollars to replace the dirt.

  “What could my client do? It might take weeks to get someone else to replace the dirt. And they might not do it right. So he paid. Now he’s coming to me to get some of his money back. And, he didn’t even keep that little piece of paper with fifteen written on it. That’s business in Parkers.”

  “Have you talked to Sam about it?” she asked.

  “Not yet,” I said. “My guess is that Sam was so mad about being asked for a contract of some sort, that he just decided to screw the guy. And my guess is he still feels the same way.”

  “Who’s the client?” she asked.

  “I can’t say,” I replied. “But he tore down a cottage and built a big glass house on the property, and I suspect old Sam saw all that and said to himself, this guy can afford it so I’ll show him how things work in Parkers. And he did. I doubt we’ll ever get a penny back. But new people are coming here, and their lawyers are coming with them.”

  “You’re not like that Ned,” she said. “You’re a good and fair man.”

  “Effie, I love you for that. And that’s why I have a special request.”

  “Remember, my husband’s a judge, so don’t you make any indecent offers,” she joked.

  “Nothing like that,” I said. “I’m told you are a very successful business woman. Your shop is well stocked and beautifully decorated. And I need help.”

  Effie got a worried look on her face, fearing a request she didn’t want to deal with.

  “How about managing my office,” I said carefully. “Not phone calls or daily stuff. I’ll do that. But how about part time, see that bills are sent out, taxes paid, cleaning lady shows up, and files are kept in order?”

  “Why Ned Shannon,” she said, a smile of appreciation on her face, “thank you. But I have a shop of my own to run. I don’t have time to be keeping your books.”

  “Well, let me try one other track,” I said. “I just bought a little piece of property overlooking the Bay down in Osprey Cove.”

  “Congratulations!” she shouted. “You’re a Parkerite
.”

  “Not yet. You see, there’s no house on this property. It’s only a quarter acre overlooking a little marshland, but I figure I don’t need a dock cause I have a slip at the Bayfront. And I don’t want a yard to take care of. And I don’t have kids who need space. I just need a view, all the way to the edge of the earth. I want to see the curvature of the planet under a pale blue sky.”

  “You get all that with a quarter acre?” she asked.

  “I do if I build a little house on pilings. I want to put it about 15 feet in the air, overlooking the marsh and anybody who walks between me and the mud.”

  “Can you afford this?”

  “I can if we do it right. The land cost ninety-nine thousand dollars. And I can spend another hundred thousand for the house.”

  “That’s not going to do it,” she said. “You didn’t let that Pippy Plotkin sell you property with the idea that one hundred thousand would build a house on it.”

  “Well, maybe. But that’s what I need you for. How about helping me with the plans? Maybe a little decoration and general oversight.”

  “Ned Shannon, I don’t know beans about building a house. And I don’t decorate for bachelors, whether they’re lawyers or watermen.”

  “Here’s what I want to do, Effie. I want to build a two bedroom, two bath, French Colonial, with one big room for living and dining, and the bedrooms above it. And here’s the coup de grace. I will park my truck under the house, right beside an elevator. How about that, an elevator to the top floor, and French doors on the main floor that will let the Bay breezes blow through every room.”

  “Ned, you are nuts. It sounds clever, and beautiful, and I can just see the sunsets from the balcony. But this is Parkers, not Paris. Are you crazy? Nobody in Parkers has an elevator.”

  “Why not me? What woman in Parkers wouldn’t want to come home to see my elevator?”

  “I will not be a party to debauchery,” she said. “But I would love to have an elevator. And I’m happy to see you’re settling in. I also caught that remark about parking your truck under the house. Does that mean the Saab is about to be history.”